Atheism, Evolution, Skepticism

Daniel 8 and the End of the World

On one of my recent posts, a commenter claimed that the Bible predicts that the United States will split into four parts. I’m always interested in tackling claims about Biblical prophecy, so I looked it up. His claim is based on Daniel Chapter 8. Now, supposedly, the book of Daniel was written during the Jewish exile in Babylon – around the sixth century BC. Daniel has a number of visions and interprets them. I’ll say up-front that the interpretation that Daniel 8 involves the United States is ridiculous fantasy; I won’t even deal with that idea because it’s not at all reasonable. However, it seems to involve a prediction about ancient Persia, Greece, and Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC – or about 250 years after Daniel’s vision. Daniel 8:

1 In the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one that had already appeared to me.
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4 I watched the ram as he charged toward the west and the north and the south. No animal could stand against him, and none could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great. 5 As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. 6 He came toward the two-horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at him in great rage. 7 I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him; the goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power. 8 The goat became very great, but at the height of his power his large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven.
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17 As he came near the place where I was standing, I was terrified and fell prostrate. “Son of man,” he said to me, “understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.”
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19 He said: “I am going to tell you what will happen later in the time of wrath, because the vision concerns the appointed time of the end. 20 The two-horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia. 21 The shaggy goat is the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes is the first king. 22 The four horns that replaced the one that was broken off represent four kingdoms that will emerge from his nation but will not have the same power.

Now, if you look at the prophecy, it says Persia becomes powerful. Then Greece comes and destroys Persia. Then Greece splits into four kingdoms. As it turns out, this seems like a fairly good prediction of history. (You can see an animated history of the Middle East here.) Persia did become powerful, but a century or two later, Alexander the Great comes along – he’s Greek, he conquers Persia, he dies in 323 BC, and in 301 BC his kingdom is split into four parts. So what’s wrong with it?

Well, the first problem is that no one is quite sure when Daniel was written. It very well could have been written after Alexander the Great, and then claimed as a ‘divine prophecy’. It’s not just the fact that Daniel “knows” the future that makes people question the sixth-century date. Daniel’s knowledge of the sixth century BC seems a bit fuzzy:

What we do know is that Daniel was written before the first century BC because it is included with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some scholars put the book of Daniel’s writing between 167 and 164 BC. (Christians, of course, continue to argue against that, but articles I’ve read on the subject seem remarkably weak at arguing for a sixth-century authorship.) If the later date is true, then these predictions become unremarkable (and deceptive) post-dictions.

The second issue here is the fact that this prophecy concerns “the time of the end”. Obviously, the world did not end shortly after Alexander the Great. But, if Daniel was written after these events, then the writer of Daniel apparently believed he was living in the end times. (Which hardly seems surprising – it just goes to show: people often think they’re living in the end times.) The Bible makes numerous predictions about the end of the world, and it has a bad record when it comes to accuracy. Even Jesus and the New Testament authors believed they were living in the ‘end times’:

Jesus predicting that he will be “coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory” before “this generation” dies:

30 At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. 32 Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34 I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. (Matthew 24:30-34)

And Paul instructing people not to marry because the end times is upon them. And, if they are married, people should live as if they aren’t married – so that they can more effectively preach the gospel before the eminent end of the world:

27 Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife. 28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. 29 What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. (1 Corinthians 7:27-31)

Christians like to claim that fulfillment of Biblical prophecy confirms the Bible’s divine authorship. I’ve looked into these claims of ‘fulfilled prophecy’ and found them woefully exaggerated. They also like to ignore all the unfulfilled prophecies. It just goes to show that the Bible isn’t a divinely-inspired book. Of course, it’s exactly what all the other religions do as well – but everyone ignorantly believes their own religion’s “fulfilled prophecy” claims.

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I don’t have time to address the entire post (and don’t have the experience, either), but it should be noted that some Christians think Matthew 24 refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and the end of a certain age, not the end of the world. They point to the fact that the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven is a reference to Daniel 7, in which the Son of Man ascends to the divine throne instead of to the earth. If this is what Jesus meant, then it’s not ridiculous to say that “this generation” wouldn’t pass away before these events are fulfilled. Andrew Perriman at http://www.opensourcetheology.net takes this approach to most of the “end times” verses in the New Testament. Just wanted to point out that opinion on these matters isn’t uniform in the Christian community.

They point to the fact that the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven is a reference to Daniel 7, in which the Son of Man ascends to the divine throne instead of to the earth. If this is what Jesus meant, then it’s not ridiculous to say that “this generation” wouldn’t pass away before these events are fulfilled.

(nod) Well, let’s look at the possibilities of what could happen:

(1) Jesus doesn’t die – ever. He keeps walking around on earth, right up until modern times.
(2) Jesus dies, but not until centuries after he was born.
(3) Jesus dies, but doesn’t go to heaven.
(4) Jesus dies and goes to heaven (to his throne).

Well, it’s hardly a significant prediction for Jesus to say that he would die “within this generation”. That leaves us with possibilities #3 and #4. Technically, we can’t verify which of those two actually happened, but it’s hardly surprising that Jesus would predict that he would go to heaven. It leaves me feeling rather unimpressed that Jesus predicted his own death with “this generation”.

But, yes, I have heard that this prediction is about the coming spiritual kingdom of Christianity. Although, technically, at the time Jesus was speaking, Christianity was already in existence.

The problem for this interpretation is verse 30: “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.” Did the sign of the Son of Man appear in the sky? Did all the nations of the earth mourn? Did they *see* the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory? No. Based on that verses 30 and 31, it very much seems like an “end of the world” prediction.

On a related note, I’ve heard that the “this generation” statement is a prediction about how the end of the world will come within a generation after the re-creation of Israel in 1948. (A lot of fundamentalist preachers – like John Hagee – are big into that interpretation.) Matthew 24:32 is apparently a reference to Israel (which is sometimes referred to as a fig tree). My problem with that prediction is that it’s rather obfuscated – as if Jesus didn’t really want people to understand what he was saying, which raises the question of why he said it at all.

This is actually one of the problems that I have with “divine predictions” – the constant “that’s not what I meant” stuff. I see it all the time with cults. They make a prediction, the prediction seems to be claiming something concrete and visible, the event never happens, and then it gets reinterpreted as a “spiritual event” or something. I’ve seen this numerous times. The one that’s coming to mind right now is the Seventh-day Adventist’s “Great Disappointment” of 1844:

The Great Disappointment was a major event in the history of the Millerite movement, a 19th century American Christian sect. William Miller, a Baptist preacher, prophesied that Jesus Christ would return to the earth during the year 1844… On the morning following the “Great Disappointment” of October 22, 1844, a Mr. Hiram Edson claimed to have seen a vision. He said that he saw Jesus standing at the altar of heaven and concluded that Miller had been right about the time, but wrong about the place. In other words, Jesus’ return was not to earth, but a move into the heavenly sanctuary as is referenced in Heb. 8:1-2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointmenthttp://www.carm.org/sda/history.htm

From what I understand about this view, Jesus isn’t speaking about his death in this passage, but rather, that the destruction of Jerusalem will be God’s way of vindicating Jesus and his message and judging his enemies and the religious institution that opposed him, and this vindication would happen within “this generation.” This may be how the people “see” the coming: Jerusalem’s fall is the visible sign that it happened. Predictions about his death happen elsewhere, though, such as in the parable of the tenants in Matthew 21.

I’ve also heard “nations” can be translated as “tribes,” which could be a reference to Israel and would fit the view that this is about Jerusalem’s end and not the end of the world (as we know it … *bursts out in song*).

In regards to the sign of the Son of Man, I’m not sure what to make of that. It might be a prophetic way of saying that something big is going to happen. Jesus uses the phrase “the sun will be darkened, and the moon won’t give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” The Old Testament uses the same language in certain places, including Isaiah 13:9-11:

“Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity …”

It sounds like end-of-the-world language, but the opening verse tells us it’s an message from God against Babylon. When Babylon fell, the sun and stars didn’t literally go out, but the prophets seemed to use this type of cosmic language to say that something big was going down (in Isaiah’s case, the fall of Babylon; for Jesus, the fall of Jerusalem). So maybe the “sign of the Son of Man” falls into that category?

I’ve heard that same interpretation about “this generation;” I’m pretty sure Tim Lahaye makes that argument somewhere. I think it’s a stretch, to say the least, but proponents of that view have to do it to meet their theological views.

As a Christian, I share the frustration over people who keep making predictions like this and then make excuses when it doesn’t come true. (I think Miller made a second prediction, which some people also bought, but I could be wrong there.) There are plenty of things that make Christians look bad, but this one could be easily remedied by simply not talking. If anything, the surest thing they can predict about the end times is that they’re going to be wrong.

My fiance goes to a Catholic university (chosen for its psych department and vicinity to her home) and this is the blog of one of her professors fife. these people “adopt” the frozen embryos left over from invetro fertilization. these “snowflake babies” have a rather low survivability rate, however thee Christians feel it is somehow pius to suffer through several miscarriages in hopes of bringing one to term. read this posting. it is her 13th attempt. 13 miscarriages, and yet the baby still dies and the parents are oerjoyed that it lived long enough to be Baptized…. i dont understand it and the idea sickens me

Aaron, that’s just horrific. Talk about making it worse, at least if those embryos were disposed of they wouldn’t have grown into something that might have gained a nervous system of some sort, before dying. Increasing suffering just to get a baptism is so macabre it literally sickened me.